by Eric Flint
“Because it’s particularly dangerous?”
Dolor stared. “No. Because I wish to take in the evening air.”
Part Four
Thursday
May 8, 1636
Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Chapter 24
The sun glinting off his helmet, Achille d’Estampes de Valençay’s armor creaked as he approached and muttered: “I hope this day finds you well, Colonels.”
Ruy did his best to affect complete composure, despite having run all the way from the waterfront just minutes before. “I am quite well, Lord de—er, Your Eminence.”
Owen Roe O’Neill smiled. “Indeed, we’re doing better’n your good self, from the sound of your voice, Cardinal de Valençay.”
“I suspect you are correct, Colonel O’Neill.” Achille turned to glance toward the approaching procession of covered sedan chairs.
“A taxing march from the cloister?” Ruy inquired.
Achille shook his heavy head. “The march, as you call it, is my one respite. His Holiness, though, feared insulting me by requesting that I don my armor this day. ‘Will you forbear this conceit?’ he asked me. Forbear! Is this what I am come to, now that am a cardinal before I am a soldier? This ‘conceit’ is what I truly am, and this is where I belong: in the air, wearing a cuirass, in the vanguard, and ready to defend my pope. But after the ‘conceit’ of today’s process is concluded”—he stared down the street toward the Palais Granvelle—“then I must put all that aside and sit in a stuffy room, high-ceilinged to facilitate a greater collection of dust. And I will sit there closeted all day, and tomorrow as well, with the stink of old and infirm men rising up about me, while they do the only thing that they still may: talk.” He stared balefully at Ruy and O’Neill. “Have you ever listened to churchmen, no matter the faith, talk for nine hours?”
“Can’t say I have,” Owen murmured, with a poorly hidden grin and a scratch at his ear.
“I have not had that singular privilege,” Ruy said, with an attempt at gravity.
“Then you have not had a foretaste of hell.” Achille looked over his shoulder. The reshuffled papal procession was drawing closer. “I have fought Turks and Algerines, Englishmen and Huguenots, and I will tell you this: war is but a human hell, a condition of mundane suffering and terror. But the actual Hell, being the creation and domain of beings beyond our ken, must likewise contain horrors and tortures more profound, more exquisite, than any human may divine—except, perhaps those who devote their lives to the contemplation of what lies beyond.” He set his helmet’s visor back in place; his voice was as muffled as if he had fallen into the Pit which he was describing. “And so, the clerics of this colloquium have managed to import some of that infernal agony into our material world—by talking. Endlessly, pointlessly talking.”
O’Neill’s eyes may have twinkled. “God knows, you’re a stronger man than I am, Achille.”
Somber gray eyes looked out the narrow vision slit of the helmet. “I am not given to boasting, but, yes, I may be. Wish me well.”
“Bon chance!” Ruy called after his broad, receding back, and not without some genuine sympathy.
Achille raised a gauntleted hand in a rueful farewell.
Ruy and Owen looked after him as he rejoined the procession.
“Suddenly, security detail doesn’t seem quite so tiresome,” O’Neill said slowly.
“Not even after running half a mile uphill without a bite of breakfast to sustain me,” Ruy answered. He assessed the Frenchman’s dejectedly slumped shoulders, then whispered so that Owen’s men could not hear. “I’ll wager a flagon of red that he will not finish the day without breaking a chair or a chin.”
Owen looked sideways, disbelieving. “Is it an eejit you’re takin’ me for, Sanchez? I wouldn’t chance that bet for the change in a tinker’s trousers.”
Which, Ruy hypothesized from the Irishman’s tone, must typically be a small or nonexistent sum. “I fear that the noble Achille shall find the life of a cardinal very dull, even if the title is little more than a convenient formality.”
“Seems a certainty.” O’Neill glanced at Ruy’s dusty boots and trousers. “And where were you coming from just before, hasty and heaving great breaths?”
Ruy only realized how truly comfortable he had become with the Irish nobleman when he discovered himself rolling his eyes in exasperation. “I was interviewing the prospective Swiss Guards.”
Owen nodded. “It’s a good sign that Urban is taking care to see that they are all trustworthy.”
Ruy watched the first of the sedan chairs draw closer. “Our good pontiff was not the source of the caution: I was. Again.”
Owen glanced sideways at him. “Oh-ho. And for your loyalty and troubles, you got the job of vetting them, didn’t yeh?”
“This is, in fact, the grisly truth.”
When Ruy did not add anything, O’Neill looked at him, frowning. “Any of them look…suspicious?”
Ruy shrugged. “One or two seem rougher types. They are in it for the money only, I suspect. Although it is hard enough to blame them for that.”
“And the rest?”
“A few who are more quiet, but that may simply be a product of their advanced years—which is to say, over twenty. The others?” Ruy heaved a great sigh. “There are four whose lips may still be wet from their mother’s milk, are enthusiastic and idealistic as only the very young may be. I see little good coming of this, but Father Vitelleschi is uncharacteristically optimistic. He considers their appearance here, and in time for the proper date of induction, a providential sign.” He shook his head. “He should know better.”
Owen clucked his tongue softly. “Mayhap he does, Ruy. He may not mean that providence is showing itself in their might, but rather, in what they symbolize to others. That unbidden, the true sons of the Pontifical Guard instinctively seek and find the true pontiff, like the three Magi journeyed to Christ. Besides, we intemperate Irish brutes can’t remain the pope’s guard forever, any more than the pope can remain out of Rome. Neither one makes for a respectable situation, you understand.” He grinned crookedly.
Ruy nodded. “And you suspect those two ‘situations’ will end at roughly the same time?”
Owen nodded, squinting at the second sedan chair as it approached. “Once the pope is on the cathedra, our job will be done. Or as soon as a proper guard is trained up. Then it will be time for the Wild Geese to fly back to Brussels. At least, those of us who are left.”
Ruy had served with many noblemen in Philip’s tercios. He had also served with many frank and plainspoken soldiers. But he had rarely encountered the two qualities in the same person. He reached up to put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “I, for one, shall be sad to see the day when you Geese alight. The pope has never had guards more true.”
Owen smiled. “Or soldiers so needed by their own homeland.” His shoulder stiffened slightly. “Here they come.” As the second sedan chair drew abreast, he scanned the procession immediately behind it with narrowed eyes, but was careful not to move his head, and so reveal that he was seeking something.
Ruy smiled. “I know which one he is, of course.”
“Well, of course you do, y’damned Spaniard. You set the order. Bah. I can’t tell where he is. Glad I didn’t take your wager on this bit of silliness, either.”
Ruy tried to keep a triumphant tone out of his voice. “Look behind the third sedan chair. The hooded clerk on the right. And I am a Catalan, not a Spaniard.”
“Well, by God’s own gravy—didn’t His Holiness squawk about that?”
Ruy stroked his impeccably groomed beard. “Not in the least. In some ways, I believe he welcomed his role, today.”
“Welcomed it? Why? Meaning no offense, but to look at him, I wouldn’t have thought a stiff hike to be among the pope’s daily disciplines and devotions.”
Ruy’s answering smile was genuine but faint. “No, you may rest assured of that. But you did not know him before
last year, before he had been driven from the Holy See. He is a changed man.”
“I’m thinking you are not referring to a sudden affinity for vigorous exercise.”
“I am not.” Ruy’s voice was serious. “He is a man who has been very close to death, and whose great power was stripped from him by those who claimed to be among his closest counselors.”
“So he enjoys the simple things of life more, now?”
“That, too. But this, I think, he does more out of an instinct for penance.”
“Penance? For what? For surviving the poisoned tongues and knives of the devil’s minions, those who’d kill a pope?” The heat in O’Neill’s voice was personal, and Ruy suspected he knew the source: the same Spanish cardinals, captains, and king who had been ready to dispatch Urban VIII in this world had proven faithless to their Irish servitors in the other. In the up-time history, four more years would see almost all the Wild Geese dead in hopeless wars, and the promise to furnish them with the means to retake their homeland from the English conveniently buried along with them.
Ruy put his palm atop the pommel of the rapier riding at his left hip. “Urban VIII did not live a particularly Spartan existence before Borja ejected him from Rome and sought his blood. Nor was His Holiness a man who always put merit before family when he chose who to promote within the Church, or whose petitions he most favored from among its many lay princes.”
O’Neill let his gaze wander away from Ruy’s eyes. Although no stranger to the realities of politics, the Irishman still seemed unwilling to accept that popes were as fallible as Ruy’s experience—and centuries of history—has proven them to be. “So you’re saying he walks his own wee Via Dolorosa when he can—to remind him to keep moving away from the life of a Pharisee and more toward that of his Creator’s Son.”
Ruy smiled. “I suspect that says it very well.”
Tone Grogan came trotting up. “The ambassadora will be here presently, sirs.”
“My poor wife,” Ruy lamented, turning to look in all directions. “Once again, she was roused before I was.”
O’Neill nodded but kept watching the procession, or more accurately the alleys and roofs that overlooked it. “The corpse they found over in the Battant?”
“The same.”
“Any news from her so far?”
“Nothing except that papers on the body pointed to L’Auberge de Boucle d’Argent as his residence. At last word, she was heading there to examine his rooms and interview any persons who might prove useful to the investigation.” As if summoned by the remark, Sharon came around the corner of the building they had been waiting in front of and glanced at the two Wild Geese blocking the entry. “So this is the place?”
“It is, mada—Sharon,” O’Neill said, patching over his gaffe with an apologetic smile as Finan and two Burgundian soldiers caught up with her.
Ruy moved one solicitous step closer to her. “What of the fellow they found in the Battant, my love?”
Sharon puffed out her cheeks; whether from exhaustion or a moment of reflection, Ruy could not be sure. “Hard to know where to begin. Most important fact first: I’m pretty sure he was a player here, but I don’t know how, just yet.”
“A ‘player’?” echoed O’Neill uncertainly.
“Sorry: up-time slang. A person of interest; someone involved with whatever schemes are unfolding here in Besançon. We got to L’Auberge de Boucle d’Argent at about nine AM, and they had already cleaned his room.”
Ruy frowned. “Could the innkeeper be implicated, trying to cover up evidence?”
Sharon shook her head. “I thought of that. We questioned him pretty closely, but he had a pretty straightforward reason: inquiries after rooms. Apparently the victim, a young hidalgo by the name of Javier de Requesens y Ercilla, had mentioned to some acquaintances that he was planning on moving over the river. Word spread quickly. The innkeeper already had inquiries, had taken a deposit. Probably made a killing, too.”
O’Neill raised an eyebrow. “In what way?”
Sharon shrugged. “Requesens had been in his best suite, second floor, since sometime late in 1634. That had been great for the innkeeper; steady occupation of his most expensive rooms. Except, starting about two months ago, as the rates went up, he had to keep the price of his suite the same: Requesens had essentially committed to a quarterly lease. So the owner is now doubling or even tripling the old rate.”
“Hmmm…so de Requesens is hardly a recent arrival.”
“No,” agreed Sharon, “but that doesn’t make him any less interesting. I could go into all of his interesting habits, his ready supply of money and no evident employment other than checking prices on various commodities in town, and the fact that he got mail from various cities in southern France, the Swiss cantons, and Spain and was never seen to post a reply. But what really matters is what we found in his room: an aerial for a radio.”
Ruy brushed at the left wing of his mustache. “By which you imply the radio itself was absent.”
She nodded. “Along with its batteries, any transmission or reception notes, or any of the correspondence he received. However, other than his purse, toiletry kit and probably a few clothes, the rest of his wardrobe and personal items were still there. Well, had been taken from the room for ‘safe keeping’ by the innkeeper. He got pretty grumpy when I impounded all of it.”
O’Neill smirked. “Yes, terrible state of affairs, that. Preventing him from personally traveling all the way to Spain—at his own expense, no less—to deliver all the dead fellow’s effects to his grieving Ma and Da. Whereas a lesser innkeeper might have succumbed to the temptation of selling it out the back, and no one the wiser.”
Sharon rolled her eyes. “Yeah, the owner of the L’Auberge de Boucle is certainly a stand-up guy.”
“A what?”
“So honest that he wouldn’t once think of selling de Requesens’ possessions. Ten times in the first hour, maybe, but never just once.”
Ruy put a hand on his wife’s arm. “You have just defined the character of almost every innkeeper who has ever lived, beauteous wife. Now, what of the fellow’s body? Did his demise resemble Lamy’s in any way?”
That brought a frown to Sharon’s face. “No. I can’t say for sure, but I think this killer was a real pro: one thrust straight to the heart. The weapon used was quite a bit broader than a stiletto, but the blade was not as wide as the daggers most people carry. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s like one of those I’ve seen you use in your left hand when you’re fencing.”
“Ah: a main gauche.”
“Yeah: that. I also think the victim knew the attacker, at least enough to allow him to get very close. There weren’t any defensive wounds, and, judging from the straw in the stall, there wasn’t any struggle. The attacker was able to get within a foot or two, and then: bam. He was done. Probably dead or at least nonresponsive before he hit the ground.” Sharon thought. “One other thing—and be warned, I’m not entirely sure of this. But I think this attacker was left-handed.”
“How do you know?” Ruy asked, delighted by the prospect of hearing his wife demonstrate more of her extraordinary ability to read such details into scenes of murder.
“Ruy, I want to reemphasize that I don’t know. But here’s what I saw: the victim was not moved. There was no sign that anything had been dragged through the straw. Also, the blood loss was completely consistent with how and where he’d fallen. So I’m going to gamble and say that the scene was not modified in any way by the perpetrator. If that’s true, then the place where the attacker’s feet apparently brushed away the straw, in relation to where his victim was, strongly suggest that they were standing to each other’s left. That’s why the stab wound was so perpendicular to the ventral surface of the victim’s torso.”
Sharon looked up from her inwardly concentrated stare and evidently saw that the eyes looking at her were no longer filled with understanding. “Umm…the stab wound went straight in. If the knife had been in the attac
ker’s right hand, given the apparent range and position of the two men, it would have gone in at an angle. The only way for the blade to enter parallel to the sternum if it was in his right hand would be some kind of weird backhanded strike where the attacker started with it drawn across his body from the left.” She mimicked the position she was describing. It was not merely awkward; Ruy could think of no reason for a presumed professional to choose such a strike. “And see: there wasn’t enough room between them for his arm to get in that position, not without alerting the victim to what was coming.”
Ruy nodded. “I think you are correct, my love: the attacker was left-handed. And he made sure to stand to the left of his attacker so that he could thrust straight out and into the heart. Nothing else makes sense.”
O’Neill kicked at a pebble. “Not bloody much about this whole bolloxed show does make sense. So we’ve got a corpse in the hay, killed by a thug who’s not using the same hand or weapon as either of the two who we presume did in Lamy. So no apparent connection between the two murders. But your lady wife digs a wee bit deeper and it turns out that the corpse is, as she so aptly puts it, ‘a person of interest.’ He’s got intelligencer written all over him. And yet all of his intelligencing equipment and records are gone. Strange, if he had been planning to leave as the innkeeper let on, that he made such a mess of his move. O’ course, that pales aside the fact that rather than go straight away to the inn he apparently meant to stay in—wonder if he’d even arranged a room there?—he goes to the stables first, though he doesn’t have a horse. And there he just happens to meet an old chum who does him in for sake of auld lang syne.” O’Neill glanced from one to the other. “Sure an’ it all makes fine, logical sense.”
Ruy started rubbing at a throbbing which had just begun in his left temple. “I think I would prefer to change places with Achille, just now.”
Sharon shook her head. “Look: first of all we don’t know that the two murders are, in fact connected. I know, the timing looks very suspicious, but it could be coincidence.”
